BeanSidhe
by Jo The Librarian
Summary: Why hasn't Angel got his Shanshu?


BeanSidhe  
  
Feedback : Pretty please, whatever you thought of it. It will feed my muse for the next story – honestly. Send it to thelibrarian2003@yahoo.com Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. If they were, I'd look after them better. No money will ever be made from this fic. Distribution: The Angel Texts Blood Roses and Scribes of Angel, Angel Elders. You want it? Really? Gosh. Just tell me where it's going please. Spoilers: None, really Rating: Family entertainment Content: B/A Future reality Summary: The apocalypse has come and gone, or not, as the case may be. What happens next?  
  
A response to Dark Star's challenge at the Blood Roses forum.  
  
Requirements: Something Irish (other than Angel) March  
  
BeanSidhe  
  
It had never happened, of course. The promised Shanshu. Or any of the other things he had once almost dared to hope for. So few, those things, but they had been beacons in the darkness for him. A sign that he might be allowed to earn grace.  
  
It had all been lies. Those half-promises, those lights shining in the darkness, had all been constructs of the Powers that Be, mental chains to keep him enslaved. At the time, when he had realised that, he had felt cheated; had raged, even, at the unfairness of it, but eventually he had come to accept that he had never had a right to expect anything at all. No, that wasn't entirely true. He'd always understood that he had no right, no expectations, but once upon a time, for a little while, there had been hope.  
  
It had started when he first met Buffy. She had made him believe that the Powers that Be were serious in their approach to him; that they might actually forgive him; might actually allow him to redeem himself. In those few heady months, anything had seemed possible.  
  
Finding out about the clause in the curse had eaten that away, like acid on human skin, made him realise that she would always be out of his reach; beyond him; a different species. As was fitting, really. But then had come the shanshu prophecy. The promise of life. The end of all his curses. Forgiveness. Buffy.  
  
Hope had raised its head again.  
  
Even at two hundred and fifty, even after spending one hundred and fifty of those years as the most vicious vampire ever to sully God's good Earth, he had been a naïf, no better than a schoolboy, unbelievably green. Still, in time, he had come to understand the truth.  
  
That had been after the apocalypse. Not Buffy's apocalypse. His own. The one where he thought he had finally understood the Senior Partners, grasped what they were. He'd been to hers, to help her, but she didn't come to his. She had somehow known what he was about, though, and she'd sent a message. 'Good luck,' it had said. 'Thinking about you'. The things you say to an acquaintance in times of trouble. Not things you say to a trusted friend, to a lover. He had been neither of those things at the time, of course, so what else could he expect?  
  
She had stayed in Europe. He had visited once, clandestinely, to make sure she was okay, but she had sensed... something... and it had unsettled her, so he had gone back to Los Angeles, and hadn't tried again, leaving the future in her hands. For some reason that he could never understand, he'd almost detoured on the way back. He had been so close, he had been so strongly tempted to visit, a feeling come from nowhere, a call, an itch yearning to be scratched, but he hadn't. Ireland. Galway. There was nothing there for him now, anyway. Nothing but remembered pain.  
  
The feeling had faded and gone as he left Europe behind. It had seemed like a loss at the time, but loss of what he couldn't say.  
  
Back in Los Angeles, he was more alone than he had been for years, with the family of Angel Investigations dead or otherwise gone. He'd tried to carry on, but his heart had not been in it.  
  
Long before the averted apocalypse, ever since losing her, since the Powers that Be had offered him their yoke, he'd understood that things could never work between them, not if he were to keep his soul. Not keeping it was too dreadful to contemplate. He'd tried to make new friends. He'd even tried to love other people, but he could only love them in a certain way – as friends, as family, never as lovers. They were important to him and he truly did love them. But they weren't his mate. He would have done most things to keep them safe, but they weren't the one for whom he would have done absolutely anything. They could never be her, and he couldn't move on from her. But he had tried to love.  
  
Now he couldn't even do that much. The futility of it all overwhelmed him. They, the humans, would die, sooner or later. He would go on. How could he open himself to the pain of loss again and again and again?  
  
Nothing should be asked to face eternity alone, not even him.  
  
He'd tried to keep up hope, but after he'd faced the promised fiends and plagues, and after he'd saved the world, nothing had changed. If that didn't earn him forgiveness, what would? And so hope had died a little more every day.  
  
Then had come the BeanSidhe.  
  
His mother had once told him that, through her line, he was descended from the old kings. He had been surprised and proud and gratified at the time – he, a descendant of the old kings! Later, of course, he had understood that the way those old boys fornicated around, most of Ireland was descended from the old kings. Nevertheless...  
  
And she had told him about the Fair Folk, even though his father would likely have beaten both of them had he known. The Irish had taken to Christianity right from the start, but never quite let go of those older beliefs. Well, apart from his father, who had no time for such rubbish. So, he had listened to his mother, drinking in her stories of the older races. The Sidhe.  
  
They had a Sidhe of their own. Each family descended from the old kings had their own BeanSidhe. Their very own haunt, heralding the death of every member, waiting to greet them on their passage elsewhere, perhaps.  
  
He had truly learned about her when his Grandda had died. The night before the old man slipped away, the haunt had wailed outside the house, calling for his spirit to leave his failing body. And it had. Liam had not seen the ghostly creature, but he had heard her. The old man had died with a smile on his face. Liam had believed. But if this BeanSidhe belonged to his family alone, where had she been on that night in 1753?  
  
Now she was here, in Los Angeles, circling his apartment, wailing for him; a sign that the morrow held his death. He'd been afraid, that first time he had heard her, when he was only a boy, but not now. He found her voice oddly comforting. He even thought that he could hear words in her wailing – or would do, if he could just listen hard enough. But even with his vampire's hearing it was faint, and lost in the sound of her passing. There it was – did she say 'home' just then? Or was that his imagination? Yes, death would perhaps be like going home. Back to an empty grave. Alone for eternity. If there were mercy, perhaps he had at least earned oblivion rather than the fires of hell, or the more dreadful prospect of eternal loneliness. If there were mercy. Although not if there were only justice.  
  
But death hadn't come for him the next day, or the day after that. And he had carried on.  
  
Weeks later, he had been returning from another mission, another immortal soul saved. Winning the apocalypse had not meant the end of evil. There could never be an end to evil. Good and evil were at opposite ends of a single continuum. Like a magnet, with a north and south pole. Cut it in half, and what you were left with was just two smaller magnets, each with a north and south pole. Cut the worst evil off the end of the continuum, and all you got were two shorter continua. Evil, like water, flowed down to the lowest point. Matter was constantly dividing itself into good and evil, and all the things in between. There was never any *end* to it. All you could do was prevent the worst excesses; make a space; light the darkness; save whom you could. Never save himself.  
  
He was driving back to the place he currently called home. He preferred to drive with the lights off when he could – he could see perfectly well, even on these back roads – and he was following the narrow, twisting lane as it forded a shallow, shrunken stream. She was crouched on the bank of the stream, washing something. When she heard the car, she rose to her feet, a woman in a green gown, her face and hair hidden in a deep cowl. She was holding a long piece of grey cloth, dark drops of water falling from it. A winding sheet. The BeanSidhe. The Washer at the Ford. She moved towards the car, and the half moon cast a silver light onto the lower part of her face. Her lips moved.  
  
"Home," she said, making no sound at all. "Home."  
  
Then she was gone, leaving a length of grey cloth, tangled and sodden in the pebbled water.  
  
She came to him a third time. At night, he heard a sound like wings, beating furiously against his windows. When he went to look, she was there. Again the half moon showed him only the lower part of her face, and again her lips moved. She made no noise, no wailing, but simply mouthed the one word. 'Home.' She came to him in this guise three nights running. Then, she didn't come again, and he felt bereft, as if he had lost his most precious gift. He didn't know why that should be.  
  
He threw himself into his work after that, took foolish risks, left himself open to death in a hundred ways. Still he didn't die. Still his foolish, stubborn soul resisted the call of his final ending. Still there was that tiny, dying grain of hope that he might be forgiven, might become *real*, might become Buffy's.  
  
But nothing changed.  
  
Not until Buffy disappeared.  
  
He had always thought that he would feel her death. Would *know* that she was gone, but he felt nothing, so he tried to tell himself she was still alive. True, he hadn't felt her very real death whilst he was in Pylea, but that had been a different dimension. That was understandable, wasn't it? Here, on Earth, surely he would know?  
  
But he would have known nothing if Giles hadn't come to find him. Oh, not to tell him what had happened. Giles wouldn't have cared whether he knew or not. It was simply that Giles thought he might have *caused* what had happened; that he had finally lost patience and taken her. Giles came prepared to kill two vampires, but found only one.  
  
She had been missing for a month, and the trail was already cold. He followed where he could, though. With Giles. The Watcher accepted his help, but with reluctance and without trust. She had been in Paris. She had said that there was something she needed to do, something she needed to see, she'd be gone less than a week. She hadn't said where or what, holding that secret close to her. She was never seen again.  
  
Oh, they looked. Another Slayer was never called. Whether that was because Willow had activated all the potentials, and no more were made, or whether it was because she wasn't dead, no one could determine. So, they told themselves she wasn't dead, and kept on looking. They spent five years searching the world before accepting that she was no longer amongst the living. Even after those years, the others never really trusted him, never really wanted him around, and so he went back to his own territory to lick his wounds.  
  
He went mad for a while. He couldn't really remember much of that lost time, just the overwhelming need to go back to Ireland. To go home. To follow the BeanSidhe. Somehow, the others discovered how bad he was, and Giles came, resentful and reluctant, with potions and spells, his last gift to the monster who had saved the world. When Giles had gone, Willow came, briefly, and held his hand.  
  
He never healed after that. Oh, his body kept right on healing, that trusty demonically-animated corpse. But not his mind. He looked inside himself and saw that the tree of half-hopes was a very sickly thing indeed, so he rooted it out, leaving a barren plain of nothing.  
  
And he carried on, the Champion of the Powers that Screw With You, a shell of a thing.  
  
Sometimes, a small, lost voice would try to tell him that there was more than this. There must be more, if only he could find the right place; if only he could go home. At those times, he would try to change things, try to plead for mercy. He spent many nights praying in churches, burning on the Cross, trying to burn out the demon. Sometimes he would try to rebaptise himself with holy water, and pray for redemption, for rebirth. But each night, weak and wounded, he had to leave before sunrise, and nothing changed.  
  
Once, he took the pilgrimage to Mount Kailas, the Axis Mundi, the place of purification of sin, of enlightenment. The mountain rose, ice-bound and pristine, from the flat plateau of Tibet, as if some long-gone godling had dropped it there, by accident or design. On the plain before the mountain lay two lakes. The one to the right, Lake Mansarovar, was the Lake of Consciousness and Enlightenment, the one to the left, Rakas Tal, the Lake of Demons. During his stay there, the two lakes were joined by a tangled, temporary stream – a rare happening, portending life-changing events, the guides said. Bathe in Mansarovar and be purified of your life's sins. A journey around the mountain, three days of arduous climbing for a human, wipes away sin. A total of one hundred and eight journeys ensures nirvana.  
  
Each night, he joined the march of pilgrims anxious for salvation. He would start by bathing in the icy depths of the Lake of Demons, accepting what he was, then journey around the mountain during the hours of darkness, hard, but just possible for him in the time, then bathe in the equally freezing waters of the Lake of Consciousness and Enlightenment, before hiding from the sun.  
  
He did that one hundred and eight times, and then another couple in case he had lost count, although he knew he hadn't.  
  
Nothing changed.  
  
He went back to Los Angeles and carried on.  
  
Then, one hundred years to the day after Buffy had disappeared, he decided that he felt tired beyond words. Old, and spent and empty. He had nothing more to offer to any of the Powers. Nothing to offer to the world. Or to himself.  
  
He felt an old nostalgia, and remembered the BeanSidhe. He spent that night drinking Irish whiskey and reading the old tales, remembering what his mother had told him.  
  
He read of the things *between* - the times such as midnight, neither one thing nor the other, the places such as doorways and gateways, neither one thing nor the other. The times and places of power, where the Fair Folk held sway.  
  
He read of Aine, the moon goddess, a friend of humanity, giving fertility, abundance and prosperity. Every year, after Lammas Day, the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to her, but that was her darker time – she would claim a life on those days.  
  
He read of the BeanSidhe, appearing as a hooded form to herald a death, and as the Washer at the Ford to tell of a life-changing event. Those usually ended in death, too. There was nothing more life-changing than death – he could attest to that.  
  
And he read of Tir-na-nOg. The land of dreams. On death, the soul was reabsorbed into the womb of the great mother and waited here, in Tir-na- nOg, for rebirth.  
  
Today was August 1st. Lammas Day. If Aine wanted a soul, she could have his. He was finished with it. At least the demon would be gone, too. He wondered how he had lasted so long.  
  
He arrived in Galway on Thursday, and on Friday evening, was walking the ground where his village had been. It was no longer there, of course. It was a place of ill-repute, accursed. His evil was remembered, even if he and his deeds had been forgotten. The walls of the houses were broken down and gone, but there were still some green mounds where the foundations endured. The church and the graveyard were still there. The church was closed up, unused but undesecrated, the graveyard old and mouldering, nestled beneath a barrow, the resting place of one of the old kings, no doubt.  
  
He knew his own empty grave even though the stone was worn and the inscription illegible. Every vampire knows his own grave. He thought he recognised the graves of those of his family who had died before him, but it was hard to be sure. There were no proper graves for those of his family whom he had killed, of course, nor for any one else who had died in that carnage. He had said that he would take the village, and he had. Every mortal soul. He had even hunted down those who tried to leave. When he and Darla were through, it was a village of corpses, with no one left alive to bury the dead.  
  
Eventually, though, after he had left, they must have been found, and placed in a mass grave, with a Celtic pillar cross to mark the spot. That had been a generous gesture from whichever stranger had done this. He briefly thought about digging into the grave, trying to find his family's bones and give them separate burial. He didn't, though. He was not at all sure that he would be able to recognise their scent, their feel, and that would have been even worse than leaving them where they lay.  
  
Now was the time, and he felt only relief. He looked up at the moon, the half moon, marking that time *between*, when it was neither one thing nor the other. Then he lay down on his own barren grave, a place neither one thing nor the other, a shell of a man with a demon and a soul, neither one thing nor the other. He curled up against his pain, and waited for the sun. It wouldn't be long. A few moments of agony, then perhaps he would be granted rebirth. At the very least, perhaps he would simply be granted oblivion. One hundred years to come to terms with the soul, and one hundred years to learn that he now wanted nothing more than to give it back. A balance of sorts.  
  
As he lay, counting his sins, weighing them against the featherweights of good he had done, the innocents he had saved, he found, for the first time, that perhaps they might match. Perhaps he had done enough. And on this last night, before he greeted the sunrise, he remembered that he, too, had been an innocent once and that there had been no one there to save him. He had been a human, full of faults and frailties, true, but an innocent. Then at last he did what it seemed no one else was prepared to do. He forgave himself.  
  
It was then that he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and a voice calling his name.  
  
"Liam. Liam. Look at me."  
  
He looked up, and in the light of that half moon he saw a woman, in a silver gown.  
  
"Come, Liam. Come with me."  
  
Her voice was like the sound of water in the desert. It thrilled him and drew him to her. He could barely see her face, so heavy was the shadow cast by her cowl, but he saw her mouth, young and beautiful, and she was smiling. He got up and followed her, wondering if he had left the shell of himself lying on the grave. He thought of turning around to see, but what would he do if there were nothing there? So he didn't.  
  
She led him to the mound of the old kings, then stood where a pool of moonlight silvered her form, making her robe shimmer with colours. She pointed to the mound.  
  
"Nine times around, Liam. Nine times widdershins."  
  
She stepped out of the silver light, and was gone. Obediently, he started towards the mound, to make the first circuit. It was Mount Kailas again, writ small. Would this bring peace, where the other had not? There, the Buddhists go clockwise, the adherents of Bon counter clockwise. He started towards the left of the mound, to the east.  
  
Her voice came again, a little exasperated.  
  
"*Widdershins*, Liam, widdershins. Not deasil."  
  
He moved to the west hand side, to oppose the approaching sun. He strode around the mound, as purposefully as he could, nine times widdershins. On the ninth circumambulation, when he returned to where he had started, he risked a small glance at his grave. The moon shone on it steadily. It was empty, just as he had found it. There was no sign that he had ever been there. The mound, though, had changed. Where there had been nothing but turf-covered soil and stones, there was now a doorway. It was filled with a pearly mist. And her. She beckoned him in. He moved towards her, but stopped in the doorway, the mist on one side, the world on the other.  
  
"You know my name, but who are you?" he asked.  
  
"Aine." She pronounced it 'Aw-ne', but he knew her now. Had known her from the start, really. In the mist, her gown changed colour, from silvery- blue to silvery-green to silvery-brown. The colours of earth and sky and water in moonlight.  
  
"Come. The doorway will not hold for long." She held out a hand to him.  
  
He took another look at the unforgiving world and, his decision made, walked with her into the mist.  
  
Questions rose and fell in his mind. The question that he asked, whilst he searched for words in which to express the others, was, "Where is this place?"  
  
She was ahead of him slightly but she paused and turned to face him. She slipped back her hood and he saw a young and beautiful woman with a halo of fiery red hair.  
  
"Tir-na-nOg."  
  
She turned and walked on, and now, as he followed, he thought that he could hear, far in the distance, the strains of happy, lilting music. The mist around him glowed like opals.  
  
"Wait!"  
  
She turned again.  
  
"Am I dead, then?"  
  
"There can be no rebirth unless death comes first. You know this."  
  
"But my grave was still empty. And I feel no different."  
  
"Do you not?"  
  
She closed the distance between them, and put her hand to his face. She seemed to bring to him a peace that he had not known before. At least not since he and Buffy... The memory made him pull back. Not again. Never again. She was not deterred. She placed her fingertips underneath the line of his jaw, pressing where the pulse point should be, would be, in a living human. Not with him, of course.  
  
She waited for a few minutes, then smiled, a delighted little smile. She reached down her hand, taking his own much larger one, and brought his fingertips to the same place. He tried to pull away, as that feeling of peace stole over him again, but she was firm. Moments passed. Then he felt it, faint but unmistakeable. The throb of blood. The pulse fell quiet again, but she saw by his face what had happened. She returned her hand to his cheek.  
  
"So it begins."  
  
"What? What begins? Why have you brought me here."  
  
A tic of anger crossed her face, and she stamped her foot.  
  
"You should have been here a hundred years ago! I called for you. I sent my daughter to you, and you ignored her. I have called for you ever since, but you closed your heart to us."  
  
Then the mood was gone, and she was all smiles again.  
  
"But you are here now, and all will be well."  
  
She turned to go but he strode forward and grasped her by the shoulders.  
  
"Please. I don't understand. Why should I have been here? And the BeanSidhe? That was your daughter? Please – tell me why I am here."  
  
She sighed, but made no move to free herself from his hold on her.  
  
"In the Last Battle,"  
  
He knew what she meant. The Apocalypse.  
  
"the Powers that Be were severely weakened. You thought of it as a magnet, cut in two, and you were right. Two smaller magnets, with good and evil at opposite ends, still there, but severely reduced, weaker than they had been when they were one. Both of them. Like the two of you."  
  
She saw the look on his face.  
  
"What? Because I am Sidhe, I shouldn't know these things? I pay attention."  
  
She drew her fingers down his cheek again.  
  
"You were right to do it. The Powers that Be expected you to do it, to cut the magnet in half, but that means that humanity is more alone than before, more dependant upon themselves. More in need of champions to show them the way. And it meant that the Powers that Be had not enough left to keep their promise to you. Before the Battle, they left your gift with me, for safekeeping. The Powers are almost gone, but we Old Ones remain.  
  
"That is why I called you to me. Only here do I have the power to give you your gift. Only here, where your death is, could you find rebirth." She pressed her fingers to his throat again. "And it has started."  
  
His voice was hoarse, disbelieving. "You mean that I am to become human again?"  
  
"Is that who you wish to be, Liam?"  
  
Not what. Who. Liam. He remembered the embittered waste of space that he had been as a young man. If he lost everything that he had become, everything that he had learned, all that would be left of him was the wastrel. No, he did not wish to go back to that.  
  
"That won't be who I become, will it? That Liam?"  
  
"Is that what you wish? To lose your memories? Forget the larger sins and only remember those smaller human sins? Never remember those you have met since you became a vampire?"  
  
Forget his sins? Yes. Forget Buffy. Or the others? But Buffy... Yes and no. Buffy? The one good thing in any of his manifestations?  
  
"Must I forget her?"  
  
"To become Liam, yes."  
  
"Might I become Angel?"  
  
"And remember everything? Isn't that what you have been doing for a hundred years?"  
  
Three hundred and fifty years of psychic baggage. Could he live with it if he were human? He hadn't managed it that well as a vampire.  
  
"Are there no other choices?" His tone became a little peevish. "I was promised humanity. Was it a poisoned gift? Can I only be a waste of space, or an emotional cripple?" He sank to his knees, overcome by desolation.  
  
She knelt with him.  
  
"You think that you are less than human? That you are a corpse, with a demon and a soul fighting for possession of it? That becoming human will change this? That you will no longer have to battle the demon? That your deeds will somehow seem less terrible?"  
  
He couldn't answer at first. She had much of it right, although not all. Well, it was perhaps all now, although it would not have been, a century ago, when Buffy was still alive. Human, he could have gone to her, asked for a chance. She could have helped him to live with his past. Not now. Never now. Finally he nodded. "Yes."  
  
"What do you think it is, this being human? Do you think that it is all sweetness and light? That they never have their own demons? Do you not remember your friends, before the Last Battle, how they *all* showed the darkness in their souls?"  
  
He remembered. How could he ever forget? He had done that to them. He had led them into the den of the dragon. It was as if he had poured some of his own darkness into them. He said so.  
  
He thought that she would hit him, but she didn't.  
  
"Foolish boy," she hissed. "They simply showed their humanity. *All* humans encompass both ends of the magnet. Just as you do. But have you considered that to be possessed of great strength for goodness means being possessed of the ability to do great evil, too? That one goes with the other? The brightest sun casts the darkest shadows. Someone was needed to protect the rest, someone with the strength to do what needed doing. You were the ones, you and Buffy. Could you have done what you did if you were human? If you were less than human?  
  
"So, think again, Liam, think what being human actually is. Or what shanshu could mean. What you wish to do with your future. Then you can decide who or what you wish to be. But not even the Powers could remove the guilt you feel for your deeds as a vampire. Only you can do that."  
  
She moved on and he followed, bewildered. At last, she came to a place where the pearly mist started to thin a little. She stopped, and saw the agony of indecision on his face. She reached out to him again, bringing that feeling of peace to his troubled thoughts, and he remembered why the Fair Folk had always been so dangerous to humans. Sly and tricky, with a deadly fascination, giving silver-tongued promises by moonlight that evaporated with the morning sun. Fairy glamours.  
  
"I am sorry. It was too soon to have said all those things. You cannot see the future, you cannot yet understand the choices in front of you, but you have taken the first step. Back there, on your grave, you forgave yourself. That had to be done, for you to have any choices at all. You could not have willingly come here otherwise. Since the Last Battle, that was all you ever had to do. Hear my call, and forgive yourself. You have done both, now, and that may help you in deciding who you wish to be."  
  
The fangs of a leviathan glinted wickedly in the deeps of his mind. He had left it too late. He was always found wanting. Always so slow and stupid. He hadn't listened and Buffy was long gone. Why would he wish to be human now? Why would life as a human – or as anything else – be so much better than the life he had led as humanity's champion, without her to live it for? The gift had come too late.  
  
He said so.  
  
She smiled again, a small, secret smile this time, and tucked her arm into his, pulling him forward out of the mist and into the sunlight. He followed her, unafraid of that, at least.  
  
The land before him opened up, wide and beautiful. It was a land of colour and warmth and peace. Fields and forests and tiny villages stretched before him into the distance. Close by, a group of Fair Folk were enjoying each other's company. They were dancing, playing music, gaming, feasting, laughing. In their midst was a human. A small, golden-haired beauty. Buffy.  
  
He stood, rooted to the spot. She hadn't seen him yet; her attention was fixed on her companions, her face filled with amusement.  
  
He pulled the moon goddess around to face him, her flesh warm against his cool hands.  
  
"What *is* this? She's dead and should be at peace! Why is she here?"  
  
Aine was unruffled. "Does it seem to you that she is not at peace? That she is unhappy? Yet she has only been here for a day."  
  
He remembered then. One day inside a fairy mound, but a hundred years passes in the world outside.  
  
"You *took* her? Tell me exactly what has happened, and remember; I still have strength to bring sorrow to this place. I'm still a vampire. I can still make you answer for any harm you have done to her."  
  
She smiled at him, a smile that had teeth in it. "Do you think we have harmed her? Of course we haven't. You have, though. Your very existence has harmed her. So has her calling. Do you think you are the only one who cannot forget? The only one who cannot forgive yourself? The only one wishing for a different state of existence?"  
  
She freed herself, and turned to pull him towards the gathering, but he refused to move. Despite his words, he felt that she might, if she exerted herself, be considerably stronger than he was, but he needed answers, and he needed them now. And he needed to be reassured that this Buffy was *his* Buffy, not simply some changeling with a glamour cast over it.  
  
Aine faced him again. She sighed, but then she told him what he needed to know.  
  
"She came here, to Galway, to the place where you were born. Where you died. She found your grave with a spell she had purchased and she lay down on it, just as you did. She prayed for forgiveness for her life, for her mistakes, and she prayed for you. For a future for you both. It was the Friday after Lammas Day. My day. So, I offered to take her, keep her here, until you were ready. She hasn't forgiven herself yet, so technically I think you would say that I stole her away. But she was willing enough. I promise you, it is she, not a changeling. You will be able to tell for yourself."  
  
"Then why are we both here? Is this where we will spend eternity? Is this the reward?" He could think of far worse places than this enchanted land, but they were strangers here, aliens. Her reply surprised him.  
  
"Not eternity, no. You will both stay here until you have decided who you wish to be. Both of you. This place will provide a space for you to do that. Together. Do you think you can both be happy here for a while?"  
  
He knew they could. He was afraid now that Aine was trying to tell him that Angelus truly was a part of him, had always been a part of him, and would never, ever be gone, but somehow he had no fears that his dark half would be allowed to appear here, uninvited. Another leviathan flashed a fang, though.  
  
"Time passes differently, here. If we stay more than a few minutes, we will be strangers in the world outside. Buffy already is. Neither of us will fit in there. When we return...*when* will it be, out there?"  
  
She seemed to glow with power; moonlight silvered her form again, in the golden light of Tir-na-nOg's sun.  
  
"You have my word. It will be tomorrow."  
  
Ah, but whose tomorrow, he thought. Then he wondered whether he cared; whether any tomorrow might not be enough, if it held Buffy. Whether he should stop doubting himself and everyone else, and simply *be*.  
  
She turned, and led him down towards his obsession. His golden girl. Buffy. As he neared her, she looked up and saw him. The smile that lit up her face made his heart give a thump. It settled back into silence but he knew there would be another one soon.  
  
He ran then, towards Buffy, towards tomorrow.  
  
THE END 8 March 2004  
  
Note: BeanSidhe is most commonly pronounced as 'Banshee'. 


End file.
